This invention relates to biaxially oriented striped nonwoven fabrics and a method for making same, and more particularly, to a method of making a nonwoven fabric having alternating high fiber density and low fiber density striped portions, and fiber mixtures of both long and short fiber lengths, said fabric having substantially biaxial orientation of fibers throughout the fabric.
Nonwoven fabrics are now used for a variety of purposes in a number of industries. These fabrics have been made traditionally by methods such as carding, garnetting, air-laying and the like. Nonwoven webs have been made to have most of the fibers therein oriented in the machine direction; other nonwoven webs have been made to have some cross orientation; and still other webs have been produced having a randomized fiber distribution. However, substantially all of these webs are lacking in any surface character or natural decorative effect. Nowhere in the art, heretofore, has a nonwoven fabric been made in an unlayered structure having a striped construction wherein half of the stripes have a high fiber density and the other half of the stripes are of low fiber density; furthermore, no fabrics have yet been made in such a striped manner, for example, wherein a majority of the fibers in the high fiber density stripes are oriented in a direction parallel to stripes (machine direction), while a majority of the fibers in the low fiber density stripes are oriented in a direction substantially perpendicular to the stripes (cross direction). No method has yet been devised for manufacturing such a fabric with at least two types of orientation disposed thereon simultaneously.
Furthermore, it has been discovered that while the biaxially oriented nonwoven fabric described above has been very satisfactory in many respects, efforts have been undertaken to attempt to reduce the cost of raw materials therein, while increasing the bulk, softness, feel and look of the resulting nonwoven fabric. Thus, a papermaker's method for making this nonwoven, using short paper fibers, will reduce costs dramatically.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to produce a method of making a nonwoven fabric with long and short fibers therein that has a striped patterned construction manufactured into it, which would be able to be produced with relatively inexpensive short fibered materials.
It is another object of this invention to produce a striped nonwoven fabric having alternating stripes of high fiber density and low fiber density.
It is a further object of the present invention to produce a striped nonwoven fabric having alternating high fiber density stripes and low fiber density stripes wherein a majority of the fibers in the high fiber density stripes are oriented in the machine direction while a majority of the fibers in the low fiber density stripes are oriented in the cross direction.
It is still a further object to produce a striped nonwoven fabric wherein the direction of the stripes are running across the fabric or at some other angle that is bias to the angle of the direction of travel of the fabric.